Chapter 222: Symbol
Moriya took a deep breath before speaking.
"The being inside that palace, is not just powerful for us he is like a deity.
When this island emerged out of nowhere three years back, our temple head got a call from that being. He summoned him just with his spiritual sense and sensing that much spiritual sense, the temple head, the grand elders and the great elders all came here together.
After listening to the explanation of the palace, our elders became greedy and after they learnt that the person in charge of the palace cannot come out, they tried to pry open another entrance so they could exploit the inheritances.
Some of them even tried to enter the palace and now as a result all those people are under arrest. They are now prisoners of that palace.
He even deliberately warned us that he can kill us anytime I want and all our territory is within his range.
The Temple head was given a chance to contact the outside world and he contacted me to do the bidding.
More than three years, I don't even know if they are alive, but I do know that the thunder god temple will be in chaos if they don't come soon enough."
At his words all the other elders shivered in fright, there is an existence within their territory which can kill them in a whim, but they didn't even know about it all this time, even the strongest person they knew was just a weakling in front of that person.
They suddenly didn't feel secure.
"Do not set your sights on the candidates who come out. The knowledge they gained and the rewards they earned will only work for them and only if someone with an equal and fair strength defeats them, the winner gets those objects.
He warned us about not try and take these objects with force, for now just let us leave them, I don't know what the exact consequences of breaking them.
These are the words of that powerful being and I don't see any reason not to believe in them.
I invited the emperors to come here today, meet them and tell them why we gathered the talents and also about the rule of not taking anything from them. They might face some consequences if they let their greed take over, at least do not let them do anything within these islands, we don't have to care what they would do on their own lands.
Also try to recruit the candidates if possible, I already gave instructions for the attendants to give them a tour of the place, so there might be many interested people, but in any case, don't force them to join, we don't know what that person thinks of them and why he is doing this, so please be cautious.
It is already a perilous enough with the absence of all the big wigs, if any more damage occurs, we are done for."
Sam and the other candidates don't know that they are here because the almighty head of the thunder god temple was imprisoned.
Sam finished the first floor and he is already on the second floor. He cleared every formation in the first floor in the shortest time possible.
He was confident that even without the observation ability he can do the same at the expense of some more time and effort. He also noticed that the actions of these people are borderline dumb, because they are purely focused on barging in the formations directly only learning after the failure step by step.
It is crude yet straight forward method.
It is like giving a person a blunt axe to chop a tree in six hours and he spent all the time disregarding the bluntness of the axe and chopping the tree.
If Sam is in that place, he would sharpen the axe for four hours and finish the tree in an hour before relaxing for the last one.
When he moved from the first floor, he noticed that the other candidates also entered the palace.
But he didn't care much.
He examined the second floor of the palace. This is also same as the first floor in appearance.
Except the board showed something about supporting artifacts.
The five doors have different names on them, one of them is speed, strength, combat awareness, defence and long range attacking.
He assumed that the stages are prepared to test these aspects of the candidate and the reward will be related to the said aspect which will enhance the candidate's expertise in that area.
Sam noticed that all of the doors are occupied. The candidates who came in must have felt desperate after seeing all of these things and went in without delay.
But for Sam, there is no hurry. One month might seem short. But it is actually quite long.
Sam only cleared the first floor to estimate the difficulty of these things and now that he has an estimation, he can explore at his own pace.
Now the first thing to do is to get as much information as he can by observing all the surroundings.
So, he made a quick trip over all the floors and since he has the highest access to the last floor, he even took a look at that.
On this top floor, Sam saw a large area and there is only one door in it leading to an unknown space there are no signs whatsoever.
The room is still filled with the electric blue colours and other shades of blue.
He found something interesting on the ceiling though and that is the image which is similar to the tattoo he saw on Arman's back.
He was surprised and baffled.
He now has a myriad of questions in his mind.
"Yanwu, do you know that symbol?"
Sam asked as he let Yanwu observe the ceiling through divine dimension.
Yanwu observed the symbol for a long time in silence.
Sam just waited without disturbing and finally an answer came.
[I can't believe this.] Yanwu said in a shocked tone and now only Sam understood that silence is because of shock. He was too immersed in his thoughts to feel Yanwu's emotions through their connection.
"What is it?"
[That is the symbol of Indra, the god of thunder and storms. He is not only a god but he also has more deities under his rule than any other god. He is an extremely mythical character to even us. I don't know how powerful he is and he is not the most powerful god too, but from what I learnt from the history, all the realms will tremble if he is angry.
He is also famous for his extreme power hunger, greed and l.u.s.tful nature. He is a classic example of womanizer.]
Sam frowned at the words. This is not what he expected. The description of the man is very similar to the Hindu Mythological character he knew from his past life.
"How does Ling Tian compare to him in strength?" Sam asked in doubt.
[Master Ling Tian? How can we compare both of them? Master Ling Tian is strong but I think he is nowhere near being a god. If he is a god, how can he interact with the beasts like us normally, they would be high and mighty. Master Ling Tian is a long way from becoming a god.]
This made Sam even more confused.
He understood from Arman that there are more than one rebirths around same time and he is not sure how many.
After hearing Yanwu, Sam thought that maybe if the Ling Tian is also on level of Gods and these gods wanted to give some people a second chance in this world out of whim.
But now that Yanwu said that they are not on the same level, this made things complicated.
There is another possibility that they really did that irrespective of their statuses and Indra being a higher god might have sent this palace down to help Arman or send some artifacts to Arman which actually makes sense because of the symbol and the lightning attribute, but if that is true why did the tattoo on Sam's back activate.
There is another chance which has even more possibility of being true and that is this palace is something the lesser races sent here and it has nothing to do with indra and only from the lesser races whom Ling Tian is in contact with are worshipping Indra and using his symbol as their totem.
His mind is screaming of endless possibilities.
The more he thought, the more he felt that this whole situation is confusing.
After minutes of fruitless pondering, Sam decided to let the thoughts go and went back to the second floor. He will just clear the floors and get whatever he can.
Anyway, no matter the reason, all these knowledge and treasures are here for him to take, so he doesn't want to miss this chance in such fruitless thoughts and the faster he cleared the whole thing, the more time he would have to study the palace in detail.
So, Sam went back to the second floor and entered the first room.